Silverblind (Ironskin) (16 page)

That nudged her memory. “Dr. Pearce said the wyvern goo was the next best thing to basilisks. Is that in your book?”

He looked at her sharply. “Pearcey was talking about basilisks?”

“In a theoretical sense.”

Tam nodded. “That’s an even older story. You know the story that basilisks can opto-paralyze us? Well, legend says they can do the same to the fey. Once upon a time there was a warrior who was granted the power of the basilisk—the story never says exactly where the power comes from, but it’s certainly clear where it goes—in his eye. The eye turns silver, and then he can control the fey.”

“The silver eye,” she said. “In the silvermen’s palms.”

“A nod to that story,” agreed Tam. “The idea that we could rise up and have dominion over the fey.”

Why did you never tell me that story? she thought. But perhaps he had not wanted to scare her, as kids. Anyway, “Basilisks are mythical,” she said.

Tam stopped the auto at the entrance to the trail. The engine rumbled to a halt as he looked at her. “Would you think I was crazy if I said I was actively looking for one?”

“Noooo,” said Dorie slowly. “Not given the other things you’ve uncovered. But in the stories, they’re huge. Monstrous. Wouldn’t someone have seen them?”

“Some historians think that they might have had a periodical life cycle, like cicadas,” Tam said. “A couple of the Old English epics refer to the ‘hundred-year blindworm.’”

“Basilisk larvae?” said Dorie, raising her eyebrows.

“I know, it sounds nuts. We don’t have much to go on. The only possible skeleton is from the seventeenth century. It’s only about four feet from tip to tail, and the current fashion is to dismiss it as an overgrown, misshapen wyvern—or even a hoax.”

“I’ve never seen that,” she said, “and I’ve been to the Natural History Museum a bunch. Is it not on display?”

“Nope. Once it was downgraded from ‘definite basilisk’ to ‘possible basilisk’ to ‘possible mutant wyvern’ it got sold off during the Great War when funds were scarce. I hear it’s in a private collection somewhere. I’d give my eyeteeth to see it.”

“You and me both,” said Dorie.

“Well, assuming it’s even the skeleton it’s claimed to be, then it’s the one the naturalist and fortune-hunter John Pendleton brought to the king. He swore it was a baby basilisk and that he had mortally wounded the mother, who was at least thirty feet long. That’s how Kent painted him in the famous picture of Sir John and the Basilisk—because Pendleton was knighted for killing the poor thing, you know. But Pendleton couldn’t produce any proof that there had been an even
bigger
creature, so opinions were divided, even at the time. At any rate. Some sort of offset cycle could potentially explain why basilisks turn up simultaneously in multiple sources, and then not again for a long time. But there are signs that are supposed to herald them coming. The historian Christopher Mills has copious notes on the strange creatures that appeared that summer. And now, this summer … well. The yellow garter snakes I’ve never seen before. The swallowtails that are too far south.”

“But migration patterns are changing,” pointed out Dorie. “The heat from the factories and the mining down south have been changing things. One of my professors last year kept talking about it.”

“True,” said Tam. “That could be all it is.”

He stepped out of the car, and Dorie followed him into the fresh air with a profound sense of relief. The clean pine scents washed away the petrol stink and nausea from the drive.

There were tire tracks all around the point of entry to the trail, not just theirs. Tam’s face darkened. In a low voice he said, “I come and find eggs, and then more and more people come. I’m contributing to a slippery slope.” He looked sideways at her as he tugged on his explorer hat, eased his leather jacket over his bandaged arm. “But you were probably a mercenary before the Queen’s Lab, so perhaps we’re not on the same side on this issue.”

“No,” Dorie said, feeling very glad she hadn’t taken Malcolm anything. “I wasn’t.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Tam said. “How to make up. There’s a line between responsible research that helps people and then…”

“Yeah,” she said gruffly, grabbing her pack. Woglet flew onto her shoulder as they started into the forest. He seemed extra alert, and she wondered if he recognized this part of the world somehow.

“I don’t know,” Tam said. “I feel like I can trust you with this, even though Pearcey would haul me off under Subversive Activities. I … don’t agree with everything the lab is doing.” Immediately he looked like he regretted having said it and he laughed at himself, embarrassed for saying something so open and naïve. “Just the side effects of having my life saved, I guess. Run off at the mouth. Don’t mind me, Dorian.”

But he could trust her. He
could
. Except where he couldn’t.

The tree canopy grew thicker and darker as they pressed deeper into the forest.

They reached the nest. Empty. Her heart gave a sudden irrational leap. She did not want a baby wyvern, dammit. Woglet poked his triangular head into Dorie’s eardrum and burbled. “C’mon,” she said. “I’m putting you in the nest anyway, so you can see what you think. Maybe the smells will tell you something.” She climbed the tree as straight human, and let Woglet crawl off her elbow and into the deep nest. He turned around a few times. Stood up and let out a sharp cry that was clearly meant to call somebody. Then turned around again, and apparently satisfied he had done all he could do, started purring.

Dorie and Tam looked at each other, wonderingly. “Well,” she said at last. “Maybe they’ll come back for that.”

Meanwhile, you never passed up an opportunity for free food, so she slithered down the tree and poked around until she found some purslane and a double handful of wild strawberries. She was never quite certain which of the three hundred varieties of mushrooms were perfectly safe, so when she found a clump, she resorted to the trick of letting her fey side take over, her fingers exploring the caps and stems in a faint blue glow that she shielded from Tam. Edible, her fingers said, and she gathered a few and sat down by Woglet’s tree, rubbing the dirt off of them as they watched and waited. She offered one to Tam, but he peered at it through his spectacles and demurred. He had never been as good a forager as she, and he was wise not to trust a strange mushroom if he couldn’t identify it for himself. He did take her up on the offer of strawberries, and she poured half of them into his cupped palms. They sat companionably, their fingers red with juice.

It was so nice just sitting with him, like back in the old days, that she almost told him then. Almost said who she was, almost transformed to prove it. But she looked at his solemn face behind the glasses and did not. Tam of old was so slow to trust. And yet here he was, eating strawberries with her like they were old friends.

Perhaps it didn’t hurt that she had started the introduction by saving his life.

The lie was a big knot in her chest, but after seven years without him she couldn’t bear to give him up so soon. Just one more day. One more adventure.

Tentatively, feeling him out, she said, “So … what if we could make up for this somehow? What if…” She took a breath. “What if there were a few ironskin left, that could be helped by the eggs?”

Tam pondered. “A few like three? Like a hundred?”

“Like twenty.”

“I suppose they could apply through the lab for aid, but I’ll warn you the lab isn’t into charity.”

“I figured as much,” Dorie said. “It seems unlikely that help would come from that source.” She watched Woglet poking around and purring, while waiting to see if Tam would come to the same conclusion she had. It was much cooler up here in the mountains, under the forest canopy. The glints of summer sun that filtered through were pleasant instead of merciless.

“You think we should help the ironskin,” Tam said slowly. He laughed ruefully. “Forget just
saying
I disagree with things. This would get us locked away for years.”

“So that’s a no?”

He looked at her. “You’ve only been there one day and you’re already pointing out where I’ve fallen into the slippery slope of just paying attention to my research and nothing else.” He cocked his head. “Who
are
you?”

But she was spared from answering this by a rush of silver wings. “Duck!” she shouted.

They took cover in the low trees and brush the best they could, Tam shielding them with his jacket. There were suddenly silver wings everywhere, crackling and snapping as the wyverns turned and swooped. Great fighting yodels broke out all around them, screeches and shrill calls, and the occasional bolt of errant steam shot past.

“Is this about us or him?”

“I think they’re here to protect Woglet!” whispered Dorie. “They don’t know from what.” The wyverns settled in a loose circle on the trees around them and she held her breath. It was a beautiful sight—all the curved silver bodies arranged in the branches. They seemed to be waiting for something, looking from one to the next. Finally, one wyvern swooped down to where Woglet was, and the others purred in unison. Dorie almost leaped out to protect her hatchling, but Tam grabbed her arm, and she remembered in time what they were doing. She waited, watching, until she saw the bit of dirty tape on the grown wyvern’s chest. It must be his parent, then—mother or father; who could tell? It had a darker silver marking like a mustache and she decided to consider it the father. He glided in for a landing and settled on a branch near Woglet’s nest, cooing in a distinctive pitch.

Woglet jumped to his feet. His purr took on a yodelly flavor. With a snap his wings fully extended into a fighting display.

Dorie did not recognize this behavior. Well, she did, but she didn’t expect it from day-old wyverns reunited with their parents. Woglet circled the nest, wings puffed up to make himself look larger. “You called your dad,” she whispered. “What did you expect?” But Woglet did not seem to know what to do with the wyvern he had called. The instinct of being a lonely woglet in a nest and summoning a protector was one thing. What to do with a large wyvern on your doorstep was another.

The parent wyvern, who had initially been welcoming, now became wary. Had it made a mistake? Was this some other, unrelated chick? The coos took on a more irritating whine. The father cocked his head from side to side, peering at the forest floor. Then he jumped out of the nest and glided down, claws extended to snatch a vole. He launched back to the nest, live vole extended to Woglet.

Woglet looked sideways at the vole. He lifted one foot, then the other.

Then he jumped and glided all the way down to Dorie, burying his muzzle in Dorie’s elbow.

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked the wyvern, and it wasn’t really rhetorical.

“That’s done it,” muttered Tam, as several more wyverns came down to explore the two humans crouched in the bushes. Woglet trotted out, rearing to a fighting position, and Dorie frantically grabbed him around his little warm belly, tucked him into her armpit where he yodeled unhappily. She did not want Woglet’s attack posture to get him killed. The father wyvern glided down and looked at all of them inquisitively. It made the distinctive coo one more time. This time Woglet spat.

Dorie looked at Woglet, now cuddled in her arms, then looked up at the father. The father looked at Woglet, Woglet looked at Dorie, and Dorie looked at the adult wyvern. They stayed like that for a long time before Woglet’s purrs turned into snores.

At that, the father wyvern seemed to decide it was official. He launched himself off the ground and into the air, all the other wyverns following behind. They tore through the trees, Dorie and Tam taking cautious steps behind them, through piles of blackberry bramble that had not been cleared for decades. Silver wings led them on through the struggle, and then all at once, the trees and bushes suddenly cleared away and the two found themselves at the top of a tall ravine. The wyverns swooped down and then up, curving around the mountain, and settling into a distant clump among the trees on the cliff face.

They watched the dark silver blur coat the side of the mountain, disappearing one by one as they blended into the mica-flecked rocks and silvery grey scrub. Woglet launched himself from Dorie’s shoulder, circled around once, and flew back, as if waiting for her to hurry up.

Tam looked at Dorie, a challenge behind his spectacles, man to man. “How good are you at climbing?”

*   *   *

It was a nasty hot trip down, picking their way through the thorns and scree. Woglet mostly flew around their shoulders, though once he spotted something he wanted to eat and flew off to nab it. For a hatchling with no parental guidance, he seemed to be getting the swing of things.

They made it to the bottom, where the summer remnants of a creek ran past in the sun. Feywort was running wild all along the creek, and she said, “Wait a minute,” and used her little knife to gather a double handful for Colin’s friend. It was flowering this time of year, and usually you could see the little blue bells of the flowers running up and down the mountain. But not this year. Just bare swathes of grey rock in its place. Feywort apparently
was
scarce, then, but where was it going? Unless it, too, was falling victim to the changes that were affecting the swallowtails and snakes Tam had seen.

They forded the stream at the stones, stopped at the other bank to let the wyvern drink. Dorie cupped her own fingers in it to have a swallow herself, but the water, which was generally clear and potable even in summer, was sharp and tingling on her fingers, and she let it fall away. She usually did not bother to bring water with her any more than food, and she swallowed against the dryness that tickled her throat.

“Pressing on,” she said, and they began their way up the other side of the ravine, weaving through the birches and evergreens. This side of the ravine was still in the tail end of morning shadow; a welcome relief from the summer sun. And then—

“Wait,” Tam said quietly, putting a hand on her shoulder. He pointed way down the ravine, down to the south.